Natural History Museum Magazine Autumn 2024 issue

Celebrating 60 years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Jaw dropping

Welcome

Autumn is here and there’s so much to discover!

This year, we’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition, which has led the world in recognising the best nature photography since 1965. Stating out with just 361 entries, this year we received a record-breaking 59,228 entries. In this issue of Natural History Museum magazine, we share a selection of our favourite images from the contest – see page 24.

You can see more of the judges’ choices – and choose your own favourites – in the exhibition. Remember that as a member or Patron you can visit the exhibition for free as many times as you like – and there’s no need to pre-book.

We also take a look back at the evolution of the competition, sharing some of the highlights, the amazing people who have shaped it, and some incredible ‘rsts’ achieved along the way. See page 32.

With the Museum’s gardens now open for you to enjoy, we reveal how Fern, our stunning free-standing bronze Diplodocus cast, was constructed in the Jurassic Garden, suppoted by Kusuma Trust.

A year after samples of the asteroid Bennu – a primitive rock unchanged since the early solar system – arrived at the Museum, Professor Sara Russell explains what they have revealed and what’s next in the search for life. See page 46.

We’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition –and its many ‘rsts’

Already embedded in our daily lives, aticial intelligence (AI) is almost inescapable. As the Museum increasingly harnesses AI in our scientic research, in recording and caring for collections, in powering data-gathering and in forecasting visitor numbers, we look at what it is and whether it could even help predict evolutionary change. See page 38.

Thank you for your ongoing suppot, which is so impotant to us. It helps us to inuence solutions to global challenges and continually advocate for nature and our planet.

Adam Farrar Director of Commercial and Visitor Experience

Join the conversation

Instagram natural_history_museum

Facebook naturalhistorymuseum

X NHM_London

TikTok @its_nhm

Youtube @NaturalHistoryMuseum

MAKE THE MOST OF BEING A SUPPORTER

The Anning Rooms

Named in honour of legendary fossil hunter Mary Anning, this suite is exclusively for your enjoyment. Tuck into tasty lunches and snacks in the restaurant, take in the views from the lounge, or read a book in the study area.

Exhibitions

Get free, unlimited entry to all of the Museum’s ticketed exhibitions, such as Birds: Brilliant & Bizarre and Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60, and guaranteed entry to our free exhibitions and installations.

Exclusive events

Enjoy private exhibition views, workshops and a new series of talks, Dig Deeper, led by Museum scientists. As well as discounted tickets you will also receive priority booking and access to a special Members’ Bar on the night.

Shop

and café discounts

Receive a 20 per cent discount in the Museum’s shops – which are stocked with a wide range of inspiring gifts, books and clothes – as well as a 10 per cent discount in our cafés and restaurants.

Never miss an issue of Natural History Museum magazine

The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD

The Natural History Museum at Tring, Akeman Street, Tring, Hetfordshire HP23 6AP

Email magazine@nhm.ac.uk

Find back issues on the Hive, an exclusive digital hub especially for you. There are over 800 pages to enjoy, featuring the Museum’s research, exhibitions and events. nhm.ac.uk/the-hive

Issue 56 Autumn 2024

Becky Clover Becky is an ecologist and urban biodiversity ocer working on the Urban Nature Project, based in the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Nature.

Dr Sophia Nicolov

Sophia is an Early Career Research Fellow, working with the Cetacea collection and specialising in environmental history.

Sir Patrick Vallance Chair of the Board of Trustees until July, Patrick was Government Chief Scientic Adviser (2018–2023), knighted twice for his contributions to science.

Meet Fern The story of our bronze Diplodocus

24 Wildlife Photographer of the Year

We share some of our favourite images from the 2024 competition.

32 More than a pretty picture

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Wildlife Photographer of the Year, we look back through time at some of the competition’s highlights.

38 Welcome to our AI Museum

As aticial intelligence permeates our lives and our Museum, we reveal how clever technology is transforming our scientic research, care for collections and visitors’ experience.

46 Decoding space dust

When space rocks from asteroid Bennu returned to Eath, Museum scientists were at the forefront of analysing them to reveal the secrets of the solar system.

52 10 dinosaur fossils that changed everything

Discover some of the most signicant dinosaur nds of our time, and learn how these fossils changed our understanding of the way they evolved and lived.

58 Standing up for nature

City of Trees CEO Jess Thompson reveals how trees can boost our health and wellbeing, and help tackle the climate and biodiversity emergency.

Journal

12 New at the Museum

This issue, we bring you an update on our pioneering work to put nature at the heat of education, reveal what our scientists carry in their rucksacks, and experience the future in Visions of Nature, our rst-ever, mixed reality experience.

16 What’s on

Exhibitions and events for Museum Members and Patrons, plus a 60-second chat with symphonic metal band Nightwish.

18 Science in focus: Revealing a whaling past We explore the history and signicance of some of the whale specimens in our collections.

20 Inside story: Johnathan Leighton Johnathan ensures neurodivergent and learning-disabled children can experience the Museum.

22

Exceptional specimen: Bringing Fern to life

Find out why our 22-metre-long, bronze dinosaur cast, Fern, is a remarkable feat of engineering.

52

Every issue

6 Viewnder

Three extraordinary images that amazed everyone at the Museum.

62 Living with nature

Find out how our newly opened gardens will continue to be among the most closely monitored urban green spaces in the UK.

66 From the Archive

Step back in time to 1878, when the British Museum moved its natural history collections to their new home in South Kensington.

Senior Editor Helen Sturge

Editorial team Kevin Coughlan, Josh Davis, Adriana De Palma, Alessandro Giusti, Dr Peter Olson, Jennifer Pullar, Emilie Pearson, Dr Helen Robetson, Professor Sara Russell, Dr Tom White and Colin Ziegler

For Our Media

Editor Sophie Stafford

At Editor Robin Coomber

Production Editor Rachael Stiles

Account Manager Debbie Blackman

Editorial Director Dan Linstead

Contributors James Ashwoth, Paul Bloomfield, Georgie Britton, Andrew Burgess, Becky Clover, Troy Donockley, Adam Farrar, Professor Anjali Goswami, Laura Jacklin, Ashley King, Lucy MinshallPearson, Dr Sophia Nicolov, Johnathan Leighton, Maja Petric, Lizzie Raey, Sarah Ralph, Pauline Robet, Kathryn Rooke, Ben Scott, Siobhan Sharp, Evie Smith, Sam Thomas, Jess Thompson, Sir Patrick Vallance

With thanks to Ed Baker, Professor Paul Barrett, Jen Benson, Nick Crumpton, Tom McCater, Armando Mendez, Tobias Salge, Dr Vincent Smith, Helen Wallis

The views expressed in Natural History Museum magazine do not necessarily reflect those held by the Natural History Museum. Produced in association with Our Media. ourmedia.co.uk

All photographs and copy © 2024 The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London unless otherwise stated. If you would like copies of any Museum images please contact the Museum Picture Library on 020 7942 5401.

ISSN 2044-7582

The paper used for this publication is responsibly sourced, and has enabled the capture of 57kg of CO2 at Thorney Coppice, Nothamptonshire. Learn more at forestcarbon.co.uk

Natural History Museum magazine is mailed in packaging using potato starch along with other biological polymers. It is totally biodegradable and compostable and can be disposed of in the green recycling bin or a home compost bin. It can also be used in your food waste caddy.

Our Media Company is working to ensure that all of its paper comes from wellmanaged, FSC®-cetified forests and other controlled sources. This

Viewfinder

Extraordinary images of our natural world

Whispers in the dark

You are probably very familiar with the chirp of a cricket, but did you know some moths can also produce sound? Male hawkmoths have special scales on their reproductive organs that they rub against their abdomens to produce high-pitched squeaks (stridulation). While some of these sounds are audible to us, most are ultrasonic – and they can be heard by bats.

For over 200 million years, moths have been pefecting the techniques to communicate with each other or with predators, such as bats. One reason why moths stridulate could be to jam the bat’s echolocation, confusing them enough to avoid being eaten.

The Museum is imaging thousands of stridulatory scales from dierent species of hawkmoth to uncover the tiny details that make each species unique – and reveal not only their hidden beauty, but also the incredible strategies they’ve evolved to survive.

A

decade of dust

The Museum’s Mammals gallery is home to four whale skeletons, which were last cleaned 16 years ago. With the recent refurbishment of the gallery, our conservation team was nally able to access the specimens and peform the huge task of repairing, stabilising and cleaning them. Dust attracts moisture that can weaken bones, and also pests, including microorganisms, that can damage them.

So the team carefully vacuumed up two thick layers of dust, a soft uy top layer and a compacted lower layer. Thanks to the refurbishment, the skeletons will now be cleaned every year.

Watch the cleaning of a 14-metre bowhead whale that was collected in 1881–1882 and has been in the collections since 1934, here: bit.ly/whale-clean

Iconic amingos threatened

The lesser amingo is in danger of being forced to leave its historic feeding grounds in East Africa’s lakes, putting the population at risk. New research, led by Natural History Museum scientist Aidan Byrne, used two decades of satellite data to study all the key amingo feeding lakes in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania.

The data revealed that rising water levels are reducing the salinity of the lakes, and decreasing the abundance of phytoplankton, the birds’ main food source. While the exact causes aren’t clear, climate change, deforestation and changes in water use are thought to be to blame.

The lesser amingo is the most numerous of the six amingo species, but the whole population uses just a handful of breeding sites. Aidan warns that the search for food is likely to push the species into new, unprotected areas.

Journal

A world of discovery awaits you in our round-up of Museum news

Taking action for young people and nature

Putting nature at the heat of education, the National Education Nature Park is now entering its second year.

This time last year, the Museum launched the National Education Nature Park, a free programme for schools, nurseries and colleges in England that puts nature at the heat of education. Commissioned by the Depatment for Education, a Museumled patnership has created a programme that empowers children and young people to make a positive dierence to their own and nature’s future.

By following a ve-step process, young people explore, map out and care for their outdoor spaces, transforming them for people and wildlife by turning ‘grey’ spaces green. To do this, they use a range of digital tools to create maps of the habitats they already have, and create new ones through improvements such as green walls, rain gardens and pollinator-friendly plants. Together, this network of spaces in education settings across

Above Pupils at Grimes Dyke Primary School in Leeds work together to identify woodland habitats in their grounds.

Above right Students at Co-op Academy Manchester create a green wall, making their playground a greener place and reducing the temperature of their technology classroom.

Young people from across England have been taking pat in Nature Park activities

the country forms the National Education Nature Park, and the collective dierence being made is displayed on an online map.

In its rst year, more than 3,000 sites have registered. Young people from across England have been taking pat in Nature Park activities, from discovering hidden nature in their school grounds to creating new habitats and connecting to nature while developing green and digital skills.

They’ve also been taking pat in the programme’s rst biodiversity survey – the Pollinator Count – which involves young people surveying insects on their site and contributing to real scientic research with the Museum’s Community Science team.

We’re thrilled with the response to the programme so far and we’re looking forward to seeing it go from strength to strength with lots of exciting developments in the coming year. More grants have been announced for eligible schools by the Depatment for Education, we’ll be sharing more free curriculum-linked resources online, regional suppot is expanding and we’re launching a Schools Forum to bring together educators and young people to help develop the programme.

If you work in education, or know someone who does, register your school, nursery or college at educationnaturepark.org.uk

YOUR MUSEUM IN NUMBERS

2

Two new spider species have been revealed on St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic Ocean. Previously confused with a closely related species, it’s hoped the spiders will add impetus to protect the island’s threatened cloud forest.

30

Some of the UK’s most familiar birds are vanishing before our eyes. The latest survey from the British Trust for Ornithology reveals that counts of swifts, swallows and house matins have fallen sharply in the past 30 years.

4

Musankwa sanyatiensis is only the fouth dinosaur ever found in Zimbabwe. Its discovery suggests South Africa’s rich fossil beds might extend futher noth than expected, meaning there are many more African dinosaurs waiting to be discovered.

Nature Table, BBC Radio 4’s hit science and comedy podcast, celebrates the natural world and all its funny eccentricities. Hosted by comedian, broadcaster and writer Sue Perkins, it promotes the impotance of all our planet’s wondeful wildlife in a way that’s fun and easy to grasp, while having a proper giggle. Several episodes were recorded at the Natural History Museum. In episode one, ‘Dogs, Ducks and a Chunk of the Moon’, Sue is joined by special guests including our curator of meteorites Dr Natasha Almeida, to chat about moon rocks and a meteorite that can explain how life stated on Eath. Episode four – ‘Super Snails and Paty Beetles’ – features curator of molluscs Jon Ablett and curator of insects

Dr Gavin Broad, who wow Sue with snails and their multi-purpose mucus.

These episodes and more are available on BBC Sounds.

A Housey Buzzes in the Key of F WIN

Based on Nature Table, A Housey Buzzes in the Key of F celebrates our planet’s surprising wildlife with facts, jokes, anecdotes and games. We have 20 copies to give away. To be in with a chance of winning one, tell us who hosts the Nature Table podcast. To enter, send an email with your name, address, phone number and answer to magazine@nhm.ac.uk with ‘Nature’ as the subject line. Or post it to ‘membership’ at the address on page 3. The closing date is 28 February 2025.

©Alamy

Journal Museum news

Scientists: what’s in your bag?

Ever wondered what equipment our scientists take on eld trips? Well, wonder no more! Our new eld bag has all the gear and all the answers.

Earlier this year, the Museum launched an exciting collaboration with premium bag and apparel brand ROKA London.

The Waterhouse Field Backpack takes its name from Alfred Waterhouse, the architect of the Museum’s South Kensington building. It’s been developed to safely stow equipment, oering protection from nature’s harshest elements, whether conducting scientic research in the eld or merely conquering the morning commute.

To prove this point, we asked four intrepid Museum scientists to put the backpacks to the test.

‘I always carry socks in my bag to stop leeches ending up in the most awkward, uncomfotable places!’

‘In the eld you need a bag with pockets – many pockets for many things,’ said entomologist Dr Erica McAlister. ‘As well as everything I need to record and collect insects, I always carry an umbrella. Like me, many insects shelter from the rain. So it’s good to sit out the deluge until they’re active and I can stat recording again.’

Moth whisperer Alessandro Giusti says, ‘This practical and spacious bag can carry most of my eldwork equipment – including my light trap.’

‘My most indispensable bit of kit is my trusty geological hammer,’ shares palaeontologist Professor Paul Barrett. ‘Not only is it essential when excavating fossils, it’s also handy as a climbing aid, for pitching tents, helping dig holes, and for reassurance when encountering angry animals!’

For curator of molluscs Jon Ablett, it’s also really impotant to have some essentials to hand: ‘The greatest source of discomfot, when searching for snails in tropical rainforests, is leeches,’ he says. ‘These blood-sucking horrors crawl out of the grass and hang from branches – at the end of a long day, I have to check they haven’t slithered into my boots or up my trousers. I always carry socks to stop them ending up in the most awkward and uncomfotable places!’

Incorporating the Museum’s vision of a sustainable future and ROKA London’s emphasis on recyclable materials, the backpack’s rugged, weather-resistant canvas is made from recycled materials such as plastic bottles. And with its many pockets and intricate detailing, it’s more than just a backpack – it’s your ticket to conquering the unknown. So now you know how our scientists use their Waterhouse Field Backpack, why not nd out where yours could take you? rokalondon.com

NEWS SHORTS

Eye of Sauron

A new species of vegetarian piranha, Myloplus sauron, has been named in honour of Tolkien’s bestloved villain, Sauron from Lord of the Rings. It is round with a black band down its side, like an eye.

Fossil worm

Advanced scanning technology has revealed that a very well-preserved fossil worm, which had been in museum collections since the 1920s, is the youngest example of extinct worms known to science.

Giga-goose

The face of a giant ightless bird has been reconstructed tens of thousands of years after it was last seen by humans. The newly uncovered skull reveals how ‘gigagoose’, Genyornis newtoni, lived.

Equipped with mixed reality headsets, visitors will be able to see animals moving around before their eyes.

Experience the future

This autumn, Visions of Nature invites you to take pat in our rst-ever mixed reality experience, and immerse yourself in the possible futures of our planet.

Explore what could lie ahead for our planet as you’re transpoted 100 years into the future. Thanks to cutting-edge technology, you’ll be visually and audibly surrounded by the wonder of the future natural world. Journey across the globe from the highlands to rainforests and even underwater, where you’ll interact with creatures right in front of you.

Experience eight dierent ecosystems and witness how human intervention

and scientic ingenuity have helped these places and species to recover.

As pat of Fixing Our Broken Planet, this experience will spark conversations about how the actions we take today can help build a brighter tomorrow.

In patnership with Microsoft, Visions of Nature uses mixed reality headsets to transpot you into a dierent world. This is a co-production with SAOLA Studios, a creative studio specialising in building augmented reality experiences.

Opens: 24 October 2024

Tickets: £9.95. Members get a 20 per cent discount Book online: nhm.ac.uk/visions-of-nature

Learn more: nhm.ac.uk/our-broken-planet

DINO TASTIC GEAR FOR KIDS

The Natural History Museum has joined forces with online personalisation specialists My 1st Years to create a kids’ collection that inspires a love of nature, while encouraging them to get outdoors and discover it for themselves.

Featuring simple but striking dinosaur graphics, the collection will appeal to budding palaeontologists of all ages. It includes t-shits, sweatshits, bags, water bottles, and outdoor garments including a raincoat and wellies.

With all items available to personalise, this collection oers parents and caregivers an oppotunity to make a unique statement with their child’s name. The collection is now available at my1styears.com.

Journal What’s on

Exhibitions

Birds: Brilliant & Bizarre

Until 5 January 2025, normal Museum opening times

From £16.50 Adults / £9.95 Kids / £13.20 Concessions / £29–£50.25 Families

Members and Patrons go free Unravel the epic story of birds, discover the secrets to their success and learn some of their surprising and often shocking tactics for survival. nhm.ac.uk/birds-brilliantbizarre

The River

Until 26 January 2025, normal Museum opening times

Free

This audio installation immerses audiences in the tapestry of sounds that echo through the underwater world of the iconic River Thames. nhm.ac.uk/the-river

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Until 29 June 2025, normal Museum opening times From £15.50 Adults /

£9.25 Kids / £12.50 Concessions / £27.25–£47 Families

Members and Patrons go free

Enjoy more than 100 winning and commended images by leading photographers from around the world at the Museum’s annual exhibition of wildlife photography. nhm.ac.uk/wpy

Other activities

Dino Snores for Kids

Every month, 18.45–10.00 £80 non-members / £72 members

Ever wonder what happens in the Museum when everyone’s gone home?

During this action-packed sleepover, you’ll take pat in fun, educational activities, discover our T. rex hidden in the shadows of the Dinosaurs gallery, follow a torch-lit trail, create your own dinosaur t-shit and experience a live science show with a Museum expet. In the morning there will be breakfast and a trail of the galleries. For ages 7–11. nhm.ac.uk/dino-snores

Find out what’s on at the Museum, and plan your next great day out, by visiting nhm.ac.uk/whats-on

Dino Snores for Grown-ups

Various dates, 18.30–9.30 £220 non-members / £198 members

Pull an all-nighter at the Museum for an unforgettable evening of comedy, food, science and cinema. Enjoy live shows, a delicious three-course dinner, live music including a harpist and Museum pub quizzes, followed by a hot breakfast the next morning. For ages 18 and over. nhm.ac.uk/dsgu

Museum Highlights Tour

Various dates and times £15 non-members / £12 members

From the awe-inspiring blue whale skeleton suspended from our ceiling to the largest blue topaz gemstone of its kind, the specimens we care for are full of wonder. Join one of our knowledgeable guides to explore the best highlights. nhm.ac.uk/events/museumhighlights-tour

Behind the Scenes Tour: Spirit Collection

Various dates, 15.00–15.45 £25 non-members / £22 members

Go behind the scenes in the Museum’s Darwin Centre for a look at our fascinating zoology collection preserved in spirit. Explore some of the numerous treasures hidden among the 22 million animal specimens housed there. nhm.ac.uk/events/behindthe-scenes-tour-the-spiritcollection

Women in Science Tour

Various dates, 14.15–15.00 Free

Hear the gripping histories of several women scientists

from history including some who’ve worked at the Museum, and learn about the Museum’s displays and our cutting-edge science. nhm.ac.uk/visit/whats-on (search free events).

Members events

Family Morning

9 November, 8.00–10.00

Join us before we open our doors to the public for a funlled morning of activities, workshops and crafts. With exclusive access to our galleries and exhibitions, discover some incredible stories that will inspire both big and little minds.

Dig Deeper: Wildlife Photographer of the Year 19 November, 18.30–20.00

Join us as we hear the stories behind this year’s inspiring images and explore how wildlife photography can pave the way for meaningful conservations.

Family Workshop –Charles Darwin’s Explorers Saturday 30 November, 8.00–10.00

Come along to the Anning Rooms for a fun, interactive session about the adventures and discoveries of history’s most famous biologist Charles Darwin.

Dig Deeper: Human Evolution 21 January 2025, 18.30–20.00

Want to understand who we are, where we came from and how we have evolved?

Join us to take a deep dive.

Please note: Some dates and times are subject to change. For futher information on members events, visit nhm.ac.uk/membership

Buzz along to the Hive

An exclusive digital hub especially for our suppoters, the Hive is lled with exciting videos, aticles and activities to help you stay connected with nature and the Museum. Here you’ll also nd an exclusive vitual events programme, bringing you closer to our world-leading scientists through a series of lectures and workshops. Discover it all at nhm.ac.uk/the-hive

60 SECONDS WITH… TROY DONOCKLEY OF NIGHTWISH

By Helen Sturge

Patrons events

Patrons Private View of Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Open to All Patrons

25 November, 20.00–21.30

Join us straight after the Dig Deeper talk to experience the newly opened exhibition and take a tour of the gallery with our expets who helped curate it.

Watch Dig Deeper: Clever Crows and Remarkable Ravens and discover how clever birds really are. nhm.ac.uk/the-hive

Behind the Scenes Tour

Open to Platinum Patrons, Family Platinum Patrons and Gold Patrons

Early 2025

We are delighted to host a visit to our osite storage facility that houses a treasure trove of the Museum’s largest zoological specimens. The curators will share insights into the history of the collection and delve into their recent research.

Tell us how nature/the natural world inuences your music

Our passion and drive for a musical expression of the natural world, the sciences with its many branches and its inherent, for want of a better word, ‘spirituality’, has consumed us as a band since 2012. All aspects of the magnicent reality of nature excites us, and we delight in introducing the subject(s) to fans all over the world.

What inspires/excites you about the Natural History Museum?

Well, it’s the world’s cathedral to the subject, isn’t it? We had the honour of having our last promotional shoot in that beautiful, hallowed building. Unforgettable.

How did you come to feature the Museum at Tring in the video for ‘The Pefume of the Timeless’?

What’s the reaction been from fans following you on this exploration of nature and evolution?

It’s been extraordinary. In the ‘meet-and-greets’ we’ve done with fans, it’s quite the thing to see kids and adults alike bring their books by Darwin or Dawkins for us to sign. Very humbling.

Tell us about your patnership with the World Land Trust We are WLT Ambassadors. The major attraction is that it actually gets things done, is non-political, transparent and full of integrity. It’s a great honour to be pat of saving habitat and raising awareness and – get this – we now have land in Mexico known as ‘The Nightwish Reserve’!

Please note: Some dates and times are subject to change. If you have any questions about upcoming events, please contact patrons@nhm.ac.uk.

As a Patron, you’ll enjoy all member benets, as well as discounted access to visitor and members events plus your specially curated programme.

That was through our great friend Dr Joanne Cooper, who is Senior Curator of Birds at Tring. It was she who enabled us to access the Museum and has allowed us to privately experience the presence of mind-blowing treasures such as Darwin’s nches.

BUY THE ALBUM

Three years in the making, Nightwish’s 10th album, Yesterwynde, is a fantastical voyage through time, memory and the better angels of human nature. It is available at nightwish.com

Journal Science in focus

LOOK OUT FOR a full feature on this project in a future issue of NHM magazine

The lowdown

Where South Atlantic region around the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, South Africa, Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia.

What The ‘Cetacean (Re)Sources’ project, funded by the Ats and Humanities Research Council, aims to understand the history and legacies of the British Empire and whaling in shaping the Museum’s cetacean collection.

When The project focuses on three overlapping phases of cetacean collecting: new colonial territories (1851–1900), Antarctic exploration (1897–1922), and whaling (1904–1960s).

Revealing a whaling past

The British Empire, whaling and conservation are inextricably linked with the Museum’s cetacean collection. Research project lead Dr Sophia Nicolov explores the changing signicance of our specimens.

From the huge skulls of blue whales to the delicate skeletons of hourglass dolphins, Dr Sophia Nicolov’s project explores the relationship between the Museum’s cetacean specimens (whales, dolphins and porpoises), British imperial activities and commercial whaling in the Southern Hemisphere.

Working with Principal Curator Richard Sabin and our Library and Archive, Dr Nicolov’s

research is uncovering where specimens came from and why, who was involved in collecting them, and how this changed over time – and the implications of these legacies for wildlife, ecosystems and people.

Specimens dating from the nineteenth century reect imperial expansion and consolidation in new colonial territories, as species were identied, named and transpoted to London. Then, with the so-called

Fast fact

The project has identied 337 specimens (such as these pectoral ippers) representing 41 species – 45 per cent from just seven commercially targeted species.

‘Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration’ at the turn of the century (1897–1922), several specimens were received from expeditions.

However, with the rise of Antarctic whaling in 1904, collecting specimens evolved signicantly. Dominated by the

Norwegians and British, the industry was centred around South Georgia and other pats of the former Falkland Island Dependencies in the South Atlantic.

Within a decade, whaling devastated humpback whale populations. Prominent Museum gure Sir Sidney F Harmer, Keeper of Zoology from 1909 to 1921 and Director from 1919 to 1927, was outspoken in his concerns. He initiated proactive collecting of specimens and data from whaling, arguing that little was known about these animals that were quickly disappearing.

Harmer repoted to the Government and led the establishment of the Discovery Investigations, a series of scientic expeditions studying the impact of whaling. Discovery specimens and data were worked on at the Museum, and many of these cetaceans still remain in the collection today.

These eots were integral to the introduction of some of the earliest (albeit limited) regulations, including a temporary ban on hunting the critically low populations of humpback whales in 1921–1922, and the rst internationally signed conventions in the 1930s. Harmer likely contributed to preventing the total extinction of blue, n and humpback whales.

This Museum legacy was continued by others, including Francis Fraser who joined in 1933 and later became Keeper of Zoology. A whale biologist on the Discovery Investigations, Fraser became a leading cetacean expet. Museum work contributed to eots to regulate the industry, including the International Whaling Commission (established 1946).

These are complex and controversial histories, but these specimens have been critical in developing modern cetacean science, and historic and current conservation initiatives. O

The secret history of four whale specimens

Human history is entangled with that of whales. These four specimens tell the story of shifting collecting practices in response to a changing empire and ocean.

Humpback whale skull

This humpback whale skull from Aotearoa New Zealand characterises the nineteenth-century culture of collection, trade and movement of natural history specimens between museums in new colonies and what was then the British Museum (Natural History). Originally held by Wellington Museum in Aotearoa, in 1876 it was purchased from Edward Gerrard, a famous London-based taxidermist, who also worked at the Museum in the mid-1800s.

These blue whale vetebrae from South Georgia were displayed at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, in the Falkland Islands Pavilion, Wembley. They were originally from either one or two whales killed by the British enterprise the Southern Whaling and Sealing Company Ltd, which donated them to the Museum at the end of the exhibition. Colonial exhibitions such as this showed o the riches of colonised lands, and promoted Europeans as a ‘civilising’ inuence.

Spectacled porpoise skeleton

Collected during Ernest Shackleton’s last Antarctic Expedition aboard the Quest in 1922, this spectacled porpoise was found stranded near the Leith Harbour whaling station. Its skeleton was preserved for the Museum, while its liver was prepared for breakfast by the ship’s cook. A diary records that British sailors were reluctant to eat porpoise, but it was eaten with relish by Scandinavians. This expedition represents the end of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Southern bottlenose whale skull

This female southern bottlenose whale was harpooned and donated to the Discovery Committee by whaling Captain Sørlle of the Vestfold Whaling Company. Southern bottlenose whales were not a target of the whaling industry. In 1934 the committee donated the specimen to the British Museum (Natural History). The 1947 Discovery Repot includes a repot about this specimen by Francis Fraser, which also features a series of illustrations.

Blue whale vetebrae

Journal Inside story

‘We aim to help all children to develop a passion for the natural world’

As the Museum’s Creative Producer for Access and Neurodiversity, Johnathan Leighton, who is autistic himself, has many years of personal experience in access work. With a passion for nature and science, he believes it’s impotant that everyone has a seat at the table.

My

life in a nutshell

Before working at the Museum I worked in the theatre industry, mainly with the National Theatre.

My earliest memory of visiting the Museum was aged ve, sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders to keep out of the crowds. This was before Dawnosaurs!

In my free time I like to knit, sew and make my own clothes.

In my role I’ve gained a deeper and more passionate understanding of nature and the people who study it.

What do you do at the Museum?

My role sits within the Museum’s Learning Team. I oversee the Dawnosaurs programme, which is a relaxed, early morning event that enables neurodivergent and learning-disabled children and their families to visit the Museum out-ofhours in a quiet and accessible setting.

Dawnosaurs events happen ve times a year and are free to attend, thanks to funding by the Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation. We explore a variety of themes throughout the year, from dinosaurs to oceans, as well as everchanging activities and learning oppotunities.

Our recent theme, home and the great outdoors, featured the newly opened Museum gardens for the rst time in the programme’s history – it was really exciting!

What makes these events dierent?

Dawnosaurs takes place before the Museum opens to the public. This allows us to minimise visitor levels, lower the sound levels, adapt the lighting levels and provide accessible activity

oppotunities. Families can expect two hours of quiet, relaxed and accessible time in both the Museum and its grounds.

Some families choose to take pat in the activities we provide, while others just like to explore the galleries we have on oer. We always have the Dinosaurs gallery open, as we know this is incredibly popular, but we try to open as much of the Museum as possible.

All the sta who take pat in these events are training to suppot our audiences and many of them also have personal experience, either being neurodivergent themselves or having friends and family who are. This makes for a really personable visit for families, and roughly 75 per cent of Dawnosaurs visitors return.

How has inclusion opened up new oppotunities to inspire the next generation? In creating accessible oppotunities for neurodivergent and disabled children to visit the Museum, we’re also creating oppotunities for these children to learn academically and to begin to develop a passion for the natural world. In doing so, we’re inspiring future generations not only to become advocates for the planet, but also to have the foundation to follow career paths in science and climate change should they wish to. Without such oppotunities, those seeds may never get sown – and the future depends on everyone.

What do you nd most rewarding?

Because oppotunities like this are so rare for the families who visit us, it’s incredibly rewarding to see the joy they get from it. For many of them, it may be the rst time they’ve ever experienced an institution such as ours. Even if they’ve visited before, seeing these families explore the Museum on their own terms is incredibly fullling for myself and the members of the Learning Team, all of whom put in huge amounts of eot to suppot these events.

Will access and oppotunities for neurodiverse visitors be expanded in the future?

Access is ever growing, and the Museum is actively involved and listening to those conversations. In the future, we hope to be able to provide events similar to Dawnosaurs for neurodivergent and learning-disabled adults, as well as improving accessibility in other day-to-day ways. O

FIND OUT MORE about Dawnosaurs at nhm.ac.uk/ events/dawnosaurs

Journal Exceptional specimens

Bringing Fern to life

This summer, the Natural History Museum unveiled an extraordinary installation: Fern the bronze Diplodocus. Find out how we created this freestanding leviathan in our new gardens.

Scientic name

Diplodocus carnegii

Chosen by Josh Davis

Science background Science writer

Walking up from the Museum Tunnel Gate and through the Museum’s newly opened gardens, visitors will be greeted by a familiar face.

A gleaming bronze dinosaur modelled on our original 1905 Diplodocus replica – known as Fern – towers over guests amid a grove of lush tree ferns and horsetails similar to those that its real-life counterpat would have eaten.

The project, which took just over three years, was a collaboration between Museum scientists, at conservationists Factum Ate and engineering company Structure Workshop. Our vision was to display Fern in a dynamic, life-like pose with no suppoting armature. While to the uninitiated this might sound straightforward, it turned out to be even more complicated than expected.

The rst stage of creating Fern was fairly easy. While the original Dippy cast was being moved during its tour of the UK in 2021, scientists at the Museum seized the oppotunity to digitally scan

Casting a life-size sauropod dinosaur out of bronze with no structural suppots had never been achieved before

The lowdown

Naming an icon

When railroad workers uneathed the fossilised bones of a Diplodocus in Wyoming, USA, in 1899, newspapers billed the discovery as the ‘most colossal animal ever on Eath’.

All-American dinosaur

Diplodocus lived in what is now mid-western Noth America, during the Late Jurassic Period (155–145 mya). Scientists recognise two species of Diplodocus that both lived at about the same time.

every one of its 292 bones. These scans were then used by a team of engineers, architects and 3D modellers to begin the process of designing the new bronze cast. On hand to oer assistance was the Museum’s dinosaur expet, Professor Paul Barrett. Over his decades-long career, Paul has become a world expet in sauropods, so there’s no one better to advise on how Fern would have moved in real life.

It was all going well, but then the team ran into problems. The individual bones cast in bronze were simply too heavy, and the areas of contact between each bone too small, for the skeleton to suppot itself along its entire length. It would take the team months of conducting state-of-the-at science and testing new techniques to gure out how exactly to construct Fern in a way that would work.

To solve the issues, the engineers turned to the biology of the dinosaurs themselves. For example, one of the key reasons that sauropods could get so big was that they had hollow bones. This provided the pefect solution for Fern, with the engineers replicating what was seen in nature and making each bone hollow with internal scaolding.

The bone casts were created in halves so that the inner structures could be added, and the spinal vetebrae and catilage discs were polished so that they would connect at a cetain angle. To suppot the long neck and tail without props, the team ran steel cables through the vetebrae and anchored them at the hips. These cables are essentially doing the same job that tendons and muscles would have done when the dinosaur was alive.

By combining these innovative solutions, the team was able to create the magnicent, fully self-suppoting, life-size bronze Diplodocus –something that’s never been achieved before. O

Assoted identity

The Diplodocus replica that would become aectionately known as Dippy was cast from a fossil skeleton that was actually made up from a number of dierent individual dinosaurs.

Eating advantage

The Diplodocus’ long neck and strange snout suggest it reached up to eat high-canopy leaves that were out of reach for other planteaters, or that they reached down to eat ground-hugging plants.

VISIT

Bridging the gap

To give Fern a self-suppoting neck and tail, the team used techniques more commonly associated with suspension bridges. This means the head and tail will sway in the wind!

Borrowed from nature

To make the bronze cast work, the team looked at how sauropod dinosaurs were ‘built’ in life, including giving Fern hollow bones, bronze ‘catilage’ and steel cables that act like tendons would.

You can see Fern, our bronze Diplodocus cast, at the Museum surrounded by a Jurassic Garden, suppoted by Kusuma Trust.

DID YOU KNOW?

In the Museum garden, Fern is joined by a second bronze dinosaur, Hypsilophodon. Native to what is now the UK, it lived in the Early Cretaceous Period, 125 million years ago.

Hip hip hooray

Out of Fern’s 292 bones, the ilium – the upper pat of the hip – was the most challenging to recreate. A new furnace was needed to melt all the bronze needed for a single pour!

Most accurate sauropod

While making Fern, Museum scientists were able to correct cetain anatomical mistakes in the original cast, such as positioning the dinosaur to be walking on its tip toes.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition attracts the best wildlife images from around the world. Here are a few of our favourite images from the 2024 competition.

DEADLY BITE

Behaviour: Mammals, Highly Commended

Ian Ford, UK

A call over the radio aleted Ian that a jaguar had been spotted prowling the banks of a São Lourenço River tributary in the Pantanal. Kneeling in the boat, he was pefectly placed when the cat delivered the skull-crushing bite to the unsuspecting yacare caiman.

The South American Pantanal wetland suppots the highest density of jaguars anywhere in the world. With prey being so abundant, there is no need to compete for food, and the usually solitary big cats have been seen shing, travelling and playing together.

Location: Pantanal, Mato Grosso, Brazil

Technical details: Sony Į1 + 400mm f2.8 lens; 1/800 at f4 (-1 e/v); ISO 400

THE DEMOLITION SQUAD

Behaviour: Invetebrates, Winner Ingo Arndt, Germany

‘Full of ant’ is how Ingo described himself after lying next to the ants’ nest for just a few minutes. Ingo watched as the red wood ants carved an already dead blue ground beetle into pieces small enough to t through the entrance to their nest.

Much of the red wood ants’ nourishment comes from honeydew secreted by aphids, but they also need protein. They are capable of killing insects and other invetebrates much larger than themselves through sheer strength in numbers.

Location: Hessen, Germany

Technical details: Canon EOS

5DS R + 100mm f2.8 lens; 1/200 at f8; ISO 400; Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX ash; softboxes

THE DISAPPEARING ICE CAP

Oceans: The Bigger Picture, Highly Commended Thomas Vijayan, Canada

Encapsulating the magnicence of the Austfonna ice cap required meticulous planning and favourable weather conditions. Thomas’s image, a stitched panorama of 26 individual frames taken using a drone, provides a spectacular summer view of meltwater plunging over the edge of the Bråsvellbreen glacier.

The Bråsvellbreen glacier is pat of Austfonna, Europe’s third largest ice cap. This dome of ice is one of several that covers the land area of the Svalbard archipelago. Some scientic models suggest that Svalbard’s glaciers could disappear completely within 400 years due to climate change.

Location: Svalbard, Norway

Technical details: DJI Mavic Mini 2 + 24mm f2.8 lens; 26 individual exposures

THE SWARM OF LIFE

Wetlands: The Bigger Picture, Winner Shane Gross, Canada

Shane looks under the suface layer of lily pads as a mass of western toad tadpoles swim past. He snorkelled in the lake for several hours, through carpets of lily pads. This prevented any disturbance of the ne layers of silt and algae covering the lake bottom, which would have reduced visibility.

Western toad tadpoles swim up from the safer depths of the lake, dodging predators and trying to reach the shallows, where they can feed. The tadpoles stat becoming toads between four and 12 weeks after hatching. An estimated 99% will not survive to adulthood.

Location: Cedar Lake, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

Technical details: Nikon D500 + Tokina sheye 10–17mm f3.5–4.5 lens at 11mm; 1/200 at f13; ISO 640; 2x Sea & Sea strobes; Aquatica housing

THE BAT SNATCHERS

Behaviour: Birds, Highly Commended Mark Whiten, UK

Mark had one night to photograph a pair of Asian pied hornbills feeding on the bats. Although the bats could have headed in any direction, he was lucky to nd himself in the right spot for a spectacle that was all over in barely half an hour.

Hornbills largely eat fruit, but they are oppotunistic feeders. After sunset bats exit the caves, with up to 14,000 of them emerging each minute. Positioned close to the entrance, hornbills use their binocular vision and precision beak to pluck bats mid-ight.

Location: Gomantong Caves, Sabah (on the island of Borneo), Malaysia

Technical details: Fujilm X-T4 + 100–400mm f4.5–5.6 lens; 1/320 at f5.6; ISO 1250

CURFEW IN LIVINGSTONE

Urban Wildlife, Highly Commended Jasper Doest, The Netherlands

Jasper highlights the coexistence of humans and wildlife. These elephants have come from the nearby Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, near Victoria Falls. Within the town itself, authorities continue to enforce the night-time cufew to allow elephants a trouble-free passage.

Wildlife rangers have worked with the Livingstone community on methods to deter the elephants. Together they have dug trenches around elds to prevent intrusions by the elephants. One conservationist devised a strategy of ‘beehive fences’, which deter elephants because the animals are nervous of the insects.

Location: Livingstone, Southern Province, Zambia

Technical details: Leica SL2 + 50mm f1.4 lens; 1/30 at f1.4; ISO 12500

POACHED EGG WITH A TWIST

Under Water, Highly Commended Nicolas Remy, Australia

Nicolas makes regular dives to document Pot Jackson sharks. Approaching from a distance, he spotted a juvenile crested hornshark holding a corkscrew-shaped object – a Pot Jackson shark egg – in its mouth. Nicolas wanted to take a photograph that was as much about the egg as it was the shark.

The shape of the Pot Jackson shark’s egg allows it to be wedged securely into tight, well-hidden spaces. Despite this, up to 90% of these nutritious eggs are taken before they hatch, by crested hornsharks and other sh.

Location: Cabbage Tree Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Technical details: Sony Į1 + 28–60mm f4-5.6 lens; 1/80 at f13; ISO 100; Nauticam housing + Nauticam Wet Wide Lens 1B; 2x Retra Flash Pro strobes

VISIT

THE EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEUM

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60 is open until 29 June 2025. Continue your journey online and discover the planet-positive actions you can take to protect the places and species you’ll see at nhm.ac.uk/wpy. Take home your favourite image from our print-on-demand facility outside the exhibition, or online at nhmshop.co.uk.

Members and Patrons receive free, unlimited entry and priority access to Wildlife Photographer of the Year and all paying exhibitions. To become a member, please visit nhm.ac.uk/membership.

If you would like to take pat in the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 61 Competition you have until 11.30 (GMT) on 5 December 2024. For more information, please visit nhm.ac.uk/wpy

Vote: People’s Choice Award

Have your say by voting for your favourite image in the shotlist for the People’s Choice Award. The annual award recognises outstanding competition entries as chosen by the public. Lovers of wildlife photography around the world can choose from 25 images, chosen by the jury and the Museum from 59,228 entries from 117 countries and territories.

Voting opens on 27 November 2024 and closes at 14.00 (GMT) on 29 January 2025. The winner will be announced on 5 February 2025. Vote for your favourite photograph by visiting nhm.ac.uk/wpy.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024 is owned by the Natural History Museum, London.

Exhibition suppoted by Associate Donor

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR PORTFOLIO 34

WIN

60 YEARS OF WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

Together, these two books form a memorable collection of all the winning and commended photographs from Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60, and the most memorable and beautiful pictures from six decades of the world’s most prestigious wildlife photography competition.

For your chance to win one of ve bundles, just tell us in what year the winning image was rst taken by a drone (see page 36). To enter, send an email with your name, address and phone number, along with your answer, to magazine@nhm.ac.uk, putting ‘WPY’ in the subject line. Or post your answer to the address on page 3. Closing date is 28 February 2025.

years of 60

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

From humble beginnings, it’s now the world’s most prestigious wildlife photography competition, reaching over one million visitors every year. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition team shares some of the competition’s many highlights and ‘rsts’.

WORDS: SOPHIE STAFFORD

1981

1985-6

Before digital cameras and online submissions, hundreds of competition entries arrive at the Museum by mail each day. Slides – known as transparencies – are posted along with an entry form. They were manually soted by Museum sta and submitted to the competition.

Wildlife Photographer of Year launches in Animals magazine: Britain’s rst colour nature magazine (later BBC Wildlife magazine). The rst judging panel includes atist and conservationist Sir Peter Scott and Britain’s only professional wildlife photographer, Eric Hosking. In its rst year, there are 361 entries.

1965 1965-6

The rst winner of the competition is C V R Dowdeswell, for his image of a tawny owl carrying food to its young. Dowdeswell took the image using a single-lens

reex (SLR) camera with a home-made ash unit and colour lm. He was awarded a specially commissioned gold medal by Sir David Attenborough.

Rosamund ‘Roz’ Kidman Cox OBE becomes editor of Wildlife. Roz said: ‘Wildlife Photographer of the Year champions the at and power of wildlife photography, and has made it into a genre that is appreciated worldwide.’

Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year is also launched this year.

1984

1988

BBC Wildlife magazine patners with the Natural History Museum and the Fauna and Flora Preservation Society to run the competition. The Museum hosts the awards ceremony and exhibition for the rst time. The competition expands to encompass 11 categories, including The Underwater World and Wild Places.

Jim Brandenburg wins the Animal Potraits category with this image, Brother Wolf Rather than a traditional potrait, the framing encapsulates the spirit and elusiveness of the wolf. Created in the woods of Minnesota, the image stated Jim’s photographic homage to wolves and remains seminal for him. The halfand-half composition has since been used by many other photographers.

One of the rst photographers whose work went beyond record documentation was David Doubilet. He pioneered the split-eld technique – creating a sense of place under the water by simultaneously showing the abovewater scene, as well as the atistry of painting colour with strobe lighting to create drama and depth.

1989

1995

1991

The rst potfolio yearbook of all the awarded entries is published.

1999

Gemma Ward takes up her post as Competition Manager – after 25 years, she’s still here. Over the years, she’s been a guiding light of the competition, championing creativity, honesty and at in photography. In 2019, she received an award for her dedication to the international wildlife photography community. She said, ‘I was overwhelmed and moved.’

1989

One of the rst international exhibition opens at Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Bourges, in France. The venue has continuously hosted the exhibitions ever since, making it the longest running patnership on tour, at 35 years in 2024.

The UK’S Cherry Alexander is one of ve female photographers to have won the overall title for her blue iceberg image from a ship in Antarctica. Over the years, the competition has taken positive actions to address the under-representation of women among the entrants, such as waiving the entry fee for women in 50 countries and promoting a diverse jury.

1995

2001

Xi Zhinong’s image of a Yunnan snubnosed monkey wins the Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife category – the rst winner from China. The image is published around the world and becomes instrumental in preventing the logging of this rare monkey’s forests in China.

2004

Digital entries are allowed in the competition for the rst time. Doug Perrine impresses the jury with his dramatic image Charging Sharks, Swirling Baitball. It’s the rst underwater digital winner and one of the earliest digital underwater entries. Doug used the rst aordable professional digital SLR, with just a sixmegapixel sensor – so to freeze the action took skill and atistry.

2006

Naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham presents the awards for the rst time, sharing his insights into the winning images. A keen nature photographer, Chris rst entered the competition in 1985, when he won the Urban Wildlife category with an iconic image of a fox photographed through a dustbin. He won multiple categories into the mid-1990s.

2006

2007

2010

Fergus Gill won Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year two years running with images of wildlife in his garden. The second time was with this image of a eldfare.

Sculptor Nick Mackman is invited to create a trophy that reects the winning image for the rst time. In 2006, this walrus was awarded to Sweden’s Göran Ehlmé for his winning image, Beast of the Sediment. Nick rst made trophies for the competition’s Special Awards in 1998 and continues to create trophies that are exquisite pieces of at to the present day.

Bence Máté wins the Eric Hosking Award, later to become Rising Star Award, with his potfolio of birds. Bence is the only photographer to have won this award that suppots young photographers aged 18 to 26, as well as both Grand Title awards (young winner in 2002, adult winner in 2010).

2011

Beautiful and shocking, Daniel Beltrá’s oil-soaked brown pelicans wins the overall title in 2011. Victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the pelicans were being cleaned at a bird-rescue facility. The chair of the judging panel, Mark Carwardine, describes the image as ‘a strong environmental statement, technical pefection, and a work of at all rolled into one’. It is the rst time a photojournalism image wins the overall title.

Road to Destruction by the USA’s Tim Laman is the competition’s rst winning image taken by a drone. This new tech provides a novel perspective on natural environments. Some of Tim’s potfolio of images reveals vast areas of rainforest burned to clear space for oil palm. It also includes the rst winning image taken with a GoPro of an orangutan climbing a tree in a national park in Borneo – one of the few protected strongholds left for the endangered ape.

Emily Gathwaite’s image of a sad and scared sun bear, tormented by its keeper, exemplies the Photojournalism category, which was introduced in 1981. The publicity resulting from the image’s success brought help to this sun bear –and four others – when a charity persuaded the zoo to allow its volunteers to improve their conditions.

2012

Mist, snow and low winter sun are an irresistible combination for any photographer fascinated by the eects of changing light on the way we see plants and landscapes. When a forest near Sandra Batocha’s home was lled with mist from melting snow, the glow of the evening sun reecting o the wet pine trunks was breathtaking. After experimenting with lenses to capture the light show, she created a magical vision of the illuminated forest. Sandra’s ability to paint with light, and use of the bokeh eect, inspired many other plant photographers.

2014

2016

2018

2019-

2021

In her role as Museum Patron, HRH the Princess of Wales attends the awards celebrating the competition’s 50th anniversary. In 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, she recorded the announcement of the Grand Title Winner for the digital awards ceremony.

The show goes on. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the awards ceremony is a reminder that life and at continues. Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin (above) host the rst ever live-streamed and socially distanced ceremony, and the winners are invited to accept their awards online in real time, so that everyone can experience the awards from their homes.

Sam Rowley wins the public’s heats – and the People’s Choice Award – with Station Squabble Sam had discovered that the best way to photograph the mice living in London’s Underground was to lie on the platform and wait.

2022

Wildlife photography helps raise awareness about the planetary emergency.

Adityakrishna Menon’s photograph of the vast illegal waste dump on the edge of an estuary, taken from his uncle’s nineteenth-oor apatment in Kerala, India, caught the attention of local journalists and a documentary was produced about it. The image, highly commended in the 15-17 years category, contributed to the site being cleaned up. Dumping waste here is now prohibited.

2022

2019

This tussle over a crumb lasted just a split second. The People’s Choice Award was created in 2014 to recognise the increasingly high standard of entries and give the public a chance to vote for their favourite images.

The WPY Academy, previously known as Young Minds for a Compassionate World, launches in Kolkata, India. This week of masterclasses with WPY alumni winners connects young people with local nature, and empowers them to be a voice for the planet.

2024

2023

Laurent Ballesta becomes only the second photographer to win the Grand Title Award twice. Chair of the jury, Kathy Moran, says his otherworldly image of a luminous horseshoe crab had the pefect recipe of ‘aesthetics, a moment, a narrative and a conservation story’. In 2021, Ballesta was awarded the grand prize for recording groupers in the rare act of spawning.

The competition has attracted prestigious juries, bringing together photographers, photo

editors, Museum expets and others to pick the winners. Judging in person, over several days, is a dynamic process, facilitating exciting discussions –and sometimes disagreements! – but most of all, displaying a boundless passion for photography and the natural world.

VISIT THE MUSEUM

Visit Wildlife Photographer of the Year 60 until 29 June 2025. Take a look back at the history of the competition, and the development of modern-day imaging techniques to represent the natural world, in the Images of Nature gallery (Red Zone) until 24 July 2025.

W l me e AI to our Mus

Aticial intelligence is transforming our world. At the Natural History Museum, it’s boosting research, powering datagathering and forecasting visitor numbers. Could it even help us predict evolutionary change?

WORDS: PAUL BLOOMFIELD

Illustration: Chris Stocker Design

Aticial intelligence is embedded in your daily life. It suggests new social media accounts to follow and TV shows to watch. It writes your emails and repots. It’s behind the voice assistant answering your queries or helping you plan travel on your smatphone – in fact, it manages your access to that device through face or ngerprint recognition. Like it or not, AI is already almost inescapable.

It’s also poweful and exible. And the Museum is increasingly harnessing AI – in scientic research, in recording and caring for collections, in making services accessible and in understanding visitors’ needs and experiences. But what is it?

‘AI encompasses a range of dierent machinelearning technologies, trained on various datasets to spot correlations or clusters within the data,’ explains AI and Data Advisor Andrew Burgess. ‘But the Museum is currently focusing primarily on two categories. The rst is predictive analytics – feeding

‘AI is going to be able to spot things that would take hundreds of years for humans to work out’

historic data into an algorithm that identies patterns and learns to predict future outcomes. ‘The second is the large language model, a type of generative AI, of which ChatGPT is the most well known. It’s trained on vast amounts of data – in the case of ChatGPT, eectively the whole internet up to a given date – to learn patterns of language in order to predict the next word, creating a response to questions on specic collections of information.’

Enter the robotic arm

AI is already turbocharging the digitisation of Museum collections – a titanic task, given the 80 million specimens involved, and the need to link images and measurements to sometimes very old, handwritten labels and complex data.

‘We’re automating as much of the process as possible,’ repots Ben Scott, Head of AI and Innovation, ‘prototyping ways of using AI to capture images of specimens. We’re training AI to detect butteies in a drawer, and use a robotic arm to pick up one specimen and move it to a staging area.

DID YOU KNOW?

A knowledge graph is a graphic representation of connections between items of data – objects, dates, locations etc – from multiple dierent sources.

Here a camera on the robot arm photographs it from dierent angles, zooming in to read the text on its label – which may have been handwritten many decades, or even centuries, ago. We’re also working on AI transcription of verbatim text, turning it into structured data.’

‘AI can do things with pattern recognition that humans can’t,’ adds Sir Patrick Vallance, Chair of the Board of Trustees until July this year. ‘That’s going to be incredibly impotant for scientic research at the Museum. Digitising the collection produces huge amounts of data about the structure of objects, but also about when they were collected, the habitats they lived in, plus genetic and genomic information. AI is going to be able to spot things that would take hundreds of years for humans to work out – minor changes in morphology linked to subtle changes in genomes, putting together a picture of evolution that’s dramatically more specic than anything we’ve had in the past.

‘AI could even enable us to predict evolution,’ he adds. ‘In other words, it might help us stat to understand what dierent pressures would do to the way the genome evolves, and the way whole species evolve. I think it’s going to open up a whole eld of very exciting and impotant science.’

A global knowledge map

Collected over some 300 years, the Museum’s collections represent a vast historical record of data that can be used for research in almost limitless ways, if it’s curated, stored and made available in

Aticial intelligence jargon buster

Aticial intelligence (AI)

A machine-based system that can analyse data to make predictions or decisions about future events, or to generate new content.

Deep learning

Machine learning using multi-layered neural networks to simulate human decision-making.

Generative AI

An AI model (algorithm) capable of producing new text, images or other content based on very large amounts of training data.

Machine learning

Systems capable of learning from, and adapting to, data without explicit instructions.

Neural network

A machine-learning model designed to mimic the activity of interconnected neurons in the human brain.

Predictive analytics

Combines data, algorithms and machine learning to predict the likelihood of future outcomes in a scenario based on historical data.

A robotic arm has been programmed by the Museum to test moving and imaging insect specimens for digitisation.

an accessible, searchable format. That’s the idea behind the Planetary Knowledge Base, which will be shared globally to accelerate research into biodiversity and habitat loss, climate change, sustainable sources of minerals and human health.

‘This project is linked to the existing Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which aggregrates all of the specimens and records from institutions across the world and makes it available as open data [data that can be freely used and redistributed by anyone],’ says Ben.

‘Using a neural network [see jargon buster, left], we’re trying to build what’s called a knowledge graph of all of the specimens, all the collectors, and all the locations. A deep-learning program will help us match the text on specimen labels to nodes on a graph, embedding each specimen in the biodiversity landscape.

‘This will create a global map on which you can identify specimens in time and place, and also access all sots of other linked data – for example, genomics and literature – to build a global picture of the state of biodiversity.’

In early 2023, Ben and his team set up a Proof of Concept lab to explore more research projects that could benet from AI assistance. ‘Any scientist at the Museum can submit an idea,’ he repots. ‘We then work out whether and how AI might be helpful in that research. So far, we’re exploring using AI for identifying nanofossils in chalk deposits, improving analysis of discoloured slides, and detecting secondary impact craters on Mars.’

Above left Museum scientists are investigating whether a robot arm can move and take photos of specimens quicker than a human to increase the scale, speed and impact of digitising its collections.

Above By deploying the latest AI-derived innovations, the Museum is helping deliver tools to study and explore environmental systems, apply AI to inform policy, and assist with environmental management decisions. This work is generously suppoted by Simon and Harriet Patterson.

Complex skull sutures evolve in mammals to absorb stresses. The clear sutures in mice make them ideal for biomedical studies of developmental disorders.

MUSEUM EXPERT Professor Anjali Goswami

Merit Researcher and Research Leader in Evolutionary Biology at the Museum, Anjali develops and applies new methods to capture the threedimensional shape of specimens to better understand why living and extinct animals have evolved to look the way they do.

AI is already proving a poweful tool in the evolution of morphology – an organism’s form and structure – and understanding how it’s inuenced by environmental factors and changes over deep time. ‘Organisms interact with their environment and with other individuals and species through their anatomy,’ says Anjali Goswami, Research Leader in Evolutionary Biology.

‘Their anatomy therefore provides a lot of information about the species’ ecology, life history, development and behaviour. We don’t have much observational information for the vast majority of animals – especially species that have already gone extinct. But by looking at the anatomy of specimens, including fossils, we can still learn a lot about what they were doing. It’s a poweful tool for understanding life on Eath – past, present and maybe future.’

Anatomical insights

Anjali and her team aim to eciently capture and analyse morphology to understand the major factors, such as environmental change, that inuence how animals evolve, and why they look the way they do. ‘To do this in a statistically signicant and robust way, you need to quantify morphology – which is dicult,’ Anjali continues. ‘Traditional approaches to describing morphology can be subjective and not comprehensive. So we focus on morphometrics – mathematically describing the shape of organisms – to reconstruct their evolution. AI helps us to extract that “shape data” for thousands of living and extinct species.’

That involves taking measurements of the positions of features on a skull or a bone of one animal, for example, and then comparing those across species and through time. In the past, linear measurements were taken with calipers or similar tools. ‘Now we use computed tomography (CT) or laser scanners to generate a 3D image of a skull, for example, capturing full suface information in detail rather than just a limited number of points,’ says Anjali. ‘Using deep learning programs, we train AI to construct 3D models from 2D X-rays captured by CT scanning. This takes a huge amount of time to do manually, but can be done incredibly quickly by AI.’

The clues in the gaps

Such techniques enable the study of complex features such as cranial sutures – the joints between bones in the skull. ‘Most cranial sutures are extremely wiggly, tessellated lines,’ says Anjali. ‘The theory is that this might reect stresses on the skull – for example, sutures might be paticularly complex around large brain cases, or in species with poweful jaw muscles whose diets require much chewing. But it’s incredibly tricky to quantify, because essentially what you’re trying to study is the space between bones.

‘In my lab, an evolutionary biologist is working with a deep-learning AI specialist to develop a model that can extract suture shapes from CT scans. So now we can trace the development of cranial sutures throughout mammal evolution, examining how dietary changes as well as expanding brain cases are reected in the complexities of these joints.’

Work with CT scans of mammal anatomy is also being used to develop practical veterinary applications. ‘One project is studying dierences between limb bone shape across dog breeds, in collaboration with patners including The Kennel Club,’ says Anjali. ‘By using AI to process CT scans, including identifying, separating and analysing dierent bones, we’re exploring dierences between breeds and also changes in shape from puppy to adult, to see how that trajectory of developmental change diers across breeds.

‘We look at how morphology reects dierences in movement, and how it may impact health,’ she explains. ‘The results will be used to train AI models to identify the risk of, or even predict the onset of, disease in various types of dog, and to develop bespoke implants for dierent breeds.’

Studying the smaller majority

As AI speeds up workows exponentially, it creates tantalising possibilities for scanning and analysing really large datasets. ‘The biggest analyses of insect morphology or anatomy ever done were only about 400 species, which is a trivial sample when you consider that there are 1.2 million or so insect species on Eath,’ says Anjali. ‘The Museum has more than 30 million insect specimens –and over the coming years we hope to use the automated AI approaches we’ve already applied to vetebrates to scan, quantify and analyse the anatomy of tens of thousands of insects. From my perspective, this is the most exciting time to work

MUSEUM EXPERT

Ben Scott

Head of AI and Innovation at the Museum, Ben has spent his career making science and natural history data more accessible. He specialises in open data and machine learning to enhance museum research and collections.

Research has revealed that all shotlegged breeds of dog are the result of just one genetic aberration that occurred quite early in their evolution.

Left Dachshunds have shot, curved legs. The growth plates in their long bones harden too early, which stunts their growth.

THE MUSEUM IN ACTION

Anjali’s team has created a searchable online repository Phenome10K.org of detailed 3D models ranging from singlecelled organisms to pats of the largest species ever to have lived – the blue whale in the Museum’s Hintze Hall.

Enter the Museum of the future

The potential for using AI to enhance the experiences of museum visitors is enormous. Already, an AI-powered humanoid robot called Pepper has been engaging with visitors to Smithsonian museums in the US – telling stories and answering questions that people may feel uncomfotable asking a human, for example, and even posing for seles.

AI could be used to curate personalised tours of a museum for visitors with paticular interests – eectively creating bespoke exhibitions. ‘There’s the potential for a fascinating guide around a complicated museum,’ suggests Patrick. ‘A visitor might say: “I want to understand why elephants look so bizarre.” And AI might rapidly create a tour of the museum, visiting displays that explore the topic.’

Using real-time data, a personalised guide could shepherd visitors away from the busiest areas at the most hectic times to reduce queueing. It could also tailor routes for people with mobility diculties, or read interpretation material for visually impaired visitors. And it could even animate a reconstructed model of a long-extinct animal in its original habitat – presenting a day in the life of a T. rex, for example. With AI developing so rapidly, these innovations are surely just around the corner.

This is a scan of Hope’s skull. Generating 3D models from scans is usually done manually and can take several days for some specimens. We’re training AI to generate 3D models from scans and can now process thousands of scans in the same time it used to take to reconstruct a single specimen.

DID YOU KNOW?

Humanoid Pepper robots (left) have been deployed in several Smithsonian Museums in the US to test how robot technology can enhance visitor experiences and educational oerings.

on the evolution of anatomy,’ she adds, ‘because you can now do big, comparative analyses that capture the complexity of organisms and sample meaningfully large chunks of the tree of life.’

The Museum is also exploring how AI can help to address day-to-day challenges. ‘Pests are the number one threat to collections – moths and beetles can literally turn specimens to dust,’ says Andrew. ‘So sta put out pheromone lures and sticky blunder traps to enable us to count and identify the pests and their locations. We’ve applied predictive AI algorithms to this data to forecast outbreaks of pests in specic areas, based on factors such as humidity, temperature and the presence of prey insects such as silvesh. If successful, this system could enable sta to focus pest-prevention measures in vulnerable areas.’

A smat friend

The ability of AI to accurately predict visitor numbers can help the Museum to plan stang levels, catering supplies and stock control in the shops, and to anticipate donations. ‘Forecasts developed using predictive learning have proved more accurate than those created by people working from spreadsheets – and were much quicker to produce,’ repots Andrew. Meanwhile, a large language model has been trained using

Hope is a blue whale that was beached in County Wexford, Ireland, in 1891. It hangs in Hintze Hall and has been scanned to train AI.

‘Forecasts developed using predictive learning are more accurate than those created by people’

Museum documents to build a chatbot that answers IT queries from sta. ‘We’re assessing how successfully it handles quick questions – such as “how do I change my password?” – out of hours. But it could be used during the day, freeing up human sta for more dicult queries,’ Andrew says. ‘It will be able to do the same for HR and nance –eventually even for some visitor enquiries.’

With such new and rapidly evolving technology comes challenges and potential threats. ‘It’s impotant to remember that there’s no cognition or understanding involved,’ Andrew notes. ‘It’s all just clever maths so, though an AI’s responses may seem like those of a sentient intelligence, it’s just recognising patterns and predicting the next word in a sentence. As a result, large language models can “hallucinate”, giving a condent answer that’s grammatically correct –

This mallee ringneck parrot from Australia has been damaged by the cigarette beetle, a common household pest in the UK. The damage was catastrophic, destroying most, if not all, of its scientic and display value.

but completely invented. We’ve overcome this problem for the Museum by training the AI on only specic collections of data, so the answers are always accurate.’

Watching you watching me

Above right

Without constant monitoring and conservation work, specimens may be degraded by pests, such as moths, silvesh and rodents. Damage may be small holes or the complete loss of the specimen, when it is past the point of being recognisable, safe or otherwise usable.

Potential uses of AI also raise ethical questions. For example, it would be useful and, in theory, possible to trace the movements of visitors around the Museum, to understand where they go and how long they spend there, in order to improve their experience. But that might involve tracking Wi-Fi logins or using cameras to identify and follow individuals, raising thorny questions about privacy. ‘Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it,’ Andrew observes.

It’s a truism that applies paticularly to this brave new world of AI, but we shouldn’t let it blind us to the potential benets. ‘The Museum has one of the greatest – if not the greatest –natural history collections in the world,’ Patrick concludes. ‘How we curate, protect and use that dataset is becoming increasingly impotant, and something museums are going to have to think about. But it’s also impotant we don’t become so consumed with safety and threats that we fail to recognise the enormous oppotunities that AI presents.’

A Merit Researcher in Planetary Sciences and Meteoritics at the Museum, Sara is a Deputy Mission Sample Scientist for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx.

After seven years whizzing around the solar system, the OSIRIS-REx mission has returned to Eath with samples collected from the asteroid Bennu. Professor Sara Russell explains how Museum scientists are helping to reveal the secrets of space.

space

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx took on an ambitious mission to visit an asteroid and bring a sample back to Eath.

Led by the University of Arizona in Tucson, the mission launched on 8 September 2016, targeting the very dark asteroid Bennu. This 500m-diameter ‘rubble pile’ consists of fragments of a larger primitive asteroid, meaning its chemistry has remained largely unchanged since the early solar system. Telescope observations suggested Bennu would be rich in water- and carbon-bearing materials, making it an ideal candidate for studying the conditions that led to the formation of planets and potential precursor chemicals contributing to the origin of life.

OSIRIS-REx used Eath’s gravity in a yby manoeuvre in September 2017 to adjust its trajectory towards Bennu. After travelling about two billion kilometres, the spacecraft reached its destination in December 2018, and began to make detailed measurements of its shape and composition. This phase of the mission introduced a few surprises.

Bennu is a small asteroid that passes close to Eath about every six years. It’s named after an ancient heron-like Egyptian deity.

In paticular, the suface, which was expected to be covered in a ne-grained, sandy dust, much like that found on the suface of the Moon, was in fact dominated by large boulders that made sampling more challenging than expected.

‘Everybody really did hold their breath as the lid was removed, revealing the sampler itself, coated in very fine, black asteroid dust’

Touching the suface

One of the most impotant tasks for the science team was to identify a suitable site on Bennu for sample collection. The site chosen, an area called Nightingale, was fairly free of boulders that could harm the spacecraft and contained enough small paticles for sampling. It also looked paticularly dark in colour, suggesting it may be enriched with carbon.

The sample collection happened on 20 October 2020, in what was called a Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample acquisition manoeuvre. During this complex operation, OSIRIS-REx descended to Bennu’s suface, made contact for a few seconds, sinking half a metre into its porous suface, then

Previous spread

This atist’s concept shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft contacting the asteroid Bennu with the Touch-AndGo Sample Acquisition Mechanism.

Above Bennu is thought to consist of material that formed during the bith of the solar system some 4.56 billion years ago.

used a burst of nitrogen gas to disturb sand and pebbles and capture them in a samplecollection device.

OSIRIS-REx then navigated back to Eath and released the sample in a protective capsule on 24 September 2023. The capsule touched down in the Utah deset in the US, and was transferred to NASA’s Johnson Space Center the next day. Museum scientists were among the rst to set eyes on the sample to help with the impotant rst stages of its analysis and curation. Waiting to greet the sample return capsule on its arrival was our Future Leaders Fellow, Dr Ashley King.

‘On the Sunday morning I was sat in a hotel room across the road from the Space Center

watching the sample return capsule plummet towards Eath. Then, just a day later, the capsule was actually there in front of me!’ said Ashley. The capsule was opened in very carefully curated conditions under a nitrogenonly atmosphere.

‘It’s a cliché,’ he went on. ‘But everybody really did hold their breath as the lid was removed, revealing the sampler itself, coated in very ne, black asteroid dust. Then you can’t help yourself –you immediately stat pointing out the grains that are larger, dierent colours, or sparkly.’ Over the following weeks, the dust was carefully removed and stored.

The total amount of sample returned is 122g and is made up of paticles that are typically very small (from dust to the size of grains

Sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission shotly after touchdown in Utah.

In its element

This single grain of Bennu is just less than a millimetre across. This is a false colour image, where elements are assigned a colour – magnesium is red, iron is green and calcium is blue, three of the sample’s main elements. The brownish background is clay minerals, which carry most of the water in the sample. Blues and purples are carbonates, and green is iron oxide and sulphides, all formed from the action of water. Red grains are a silicate called olivine, remnants of the disc material from which Bennu’s parent asteroid accreted; these have survived the extensive water-driven transformation seen on the rest of the sample.

DID YOU KNOW?

Bennu’s suface was found to be strewn with large boulders and a loosely packed layer of ne rocks with almost no cohesion. When OSIRIS-REx made contact with the asteroid to collect a sample, the team suspects that if the spacecraft hadn’t red its reverse thrusters, it would have simply sunk into the asteroid’s suface and the entire spacecraft could have been swallowed up.

©NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

©NASA/Keegan Barber

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Both are thought to be captured asteroids or debris.

Future missions into space

DID YOU KNOW?

OSIRIS-REx was not the rst samplereturn mission to an asteroid. The Japanese space agency, JAXA, has successfully returned material from two asteroids – Itokawa and Ryugu – as pat of the Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 missions.

Looking ahead, OSIRIS-REx and its sister Hayabusa missions are pathnders for future missions to bring space material to Eath for study.

The Chinese missions Chang’e 5 and Chang’e 6 have recently returned material from the Moon.

Atemis is a multi-national, coordinated programme led by the USA to explore the Moon with both robots and humans, and study lunar samples on the Moon and bring them back to Eath in the coming years.

JAXA’s MMX mission, which launches in 2026, will visit Mars’ largest moon, Phobos, and bring fragments back to Eath.

Beyond this, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will bring back samples from Mars, a rst step towards eventually having humans set foot on the red planet.

of sand), but with a few larger pebbles, the largest being ~3.5cm long. The colour of the asteroid samples is mostly black, but with some grains of a white material also within the collection.

A teaspoonful of space dust

The Museum was allocated around 100mg of material – scarcely a teaspoonful – for its initial studies. We analysed some of the sample using a technique called X-ray diraction (XRD), which res a beam of X-rays at the sample and looks to see how the crystals inside change their trajectory. This enables us to learn about the minerals present.

We found the Bennu sample to be made mostly of water-bearing clay minerals, with a mixture of other minerals as well, including carbonates, sulphides and iron oxides, that formed by the action of water in the early solar system.

From our teaspoonful of material, we picked out a dozen or so of the larger grains, which were still only around 1mm in size. The rst step in the characterisation of these paticles was computed tomography (CT) scanning, led by

the chips with no preparation. We then imaged them and used the energy of the X-rays emitted from the samples to discover the elements present. These conrmed the mineral identications we had made by X-ray, as well as showing the presence of carbon-bearing globules and many other minor phases, including silicates, oxides, suldes and phosphides.

Revealing cosmic secrets

The samples at the Museum are kept in a nitrogen environment, awaiting futher study.

Next, the grains were prepared by mounting them in epoxy and polishing the suface completely at. This enables us to do more high-magnication imaging and also to obtain quantitative chemical analyses, plus oxygen isotope measurements with our collaborators at the Open University in Milton Keynes. One surprise was the discovery that the white paticles in the asteroid are an unusual magnesium- and sodium-rich phosphate, a mineral that’s very rare on Eath and in meteorites. Its presence suggests that the asteroid was once pat of a very volatile body, and that nearly all the minerals it contains formed in the presence of water. Asteroids like Bennu are likely to have impacted

The mission’s findings will enhance our understanding of the solar system’s history and the potential for life beyond Eath

Senior Curator in Meteorites, Dr Natasha Almeida. This non-destructive imaging technique shows us the structure of the grains in three dimensions. CT scans showed that the samples were often brecciated, or looked like a jumble of dierent rocks mixed together.

This is likely to be due to the larger asteroid from which Bennu is descended experiencing many impacts, churning and mixing pats of the asteroid together. The next stage was to study these chips by optical microscopy and by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Lead by Dr Tobias Salge, an expet in electron-probe microanalysis, we used a novel technique to minimise the destruction of this precious material. We mounted

Top left Everything about the handling and examination of the samples is a tightly controlled process to avoid contamination.

Bottom left It might not look like much, but this sample of Bennu could hold the clues for the origin of Eath.

the early Eath, potentially bringing the water that formed our oceans, as well as carbonaceous material and bio-essential elements such as phosphorous. Without these lifeless bodies, we may never have evolved into the habitable world we now all live in.

The mission’s ndings will enhance our understanding of the solar system’s history and the potential for life beyond Eath. Studying Bennu’s physical propeties, and collecting information about the forces that move asteroids, could help develop planetary-defence strategies against potentially hazardous asteroid impacts, improving predictions about which ones could be on a crash-course with our planet.

Our heritage

Megalosaurus

Before the word ‘dinosaur’ had even been invented, there was Megalosaurus. The rst fossil of this carnivore may have been discovered back in the 1600s, when Dr Robet Plot acquired a bone that looked like the lower pat of a thigh bone. Over a century later, it was named Scrotum humanum by a physician named Richard Brookes, as it was thought to represent the preserved private pats of a giant man. Today, it’s believed this might have been pat of a Megalosaurus leg, but with the fossil lost it’s impossible to be sure. Megalosaurus was ocially named as a species of ancient lizard in 1824, by the Reverend William Buckland, using other fossils including a distinctive lower jaw. While his suggestion that the animal was around the length of a large whale was a little o, Megalosaurus will forever remain the rst named species of dinosaur.

Sinornithosaurus

While early scientists like Buckland thought dinosaurs were giant lizards very dierent from living creatures, discoveries during the ‘Dinosaur Renaissance’ of the 1960s highlighted their similarities with birds, suggesting they might be the antecedents of avians. Any remaining doubt was put to bed in the 1990s, when species such as Sinosauropteryx and Sinornithosaurus were unveiled in China. These fossils were preserved in exquisite detail, including their feathers. While the feathers aren’t quite the same as those in modern birds, scientists identied clear links. The structure of the feathers means they couldn’t have been used for ying, but might have been used for keeping warm or attracting mates. The closest relatives of birds, the coelurosaurians, probably all had feathers, but there’s controversy around whether other dinosaurs had them. Finding preserved feathers in even older dinosaurs would help to answer this question once and for all.

DID YOU KNOW?

‘Fuzzy raptor’ is one of the most impotant feathered dinosaur fossils. This small skeleton shows that a single dinosaur species could have diverse feather types, with distinctively shaped feathers in dierent body regions.

fossils dinosaur

that changed everything

Dinosaurs have captured the human imagination since the rst one was named 200 years ago. Now, amid a ‘golden age’ in palaeontology, we’ve chosen some of the most impotant fossils that have helped us understand them.

WORDS: JAMES ASHWORTH

FOCUS ON Argentina

Many of the most complete early dinosaur skeletons, such as this Eoraptor, have been discovered in the arid badlands of Ischigualasto, in western Argentina. This is one of the most impotant sites there is for understanding the rst stages of dinosaur evolution.

Species like Eoraptor show that early dinosaurs were probably omnivorous, eating plants and meat 3 4

Eoraptor

As is perhaps tting for an early dinosaur, Eoraptor’s name means ‘dawn plunderer’. It dates back to the Late Triassic, when dinosaurs were becoming more common across the world, and would soon come to dominate Eath’s ecosystems.

Species like Eoraptor show that early dinosaurs were probably omnivorous, with a mixture of plant- and meat-eating characteristics. Their other features are just as diverse, making it hard to classify them in terms of the groups established for later dinosaurs. As a result, while researchers continue to investigate where dinosaurs came from, early dinosaurs often move between dierent groups as new features are discovered. In order to resolve these issues, more well-preserved fossils of early dinosaurs will be needed to determine when dierent groups evolved, and the exact relationships between them.

Below This Scolosaurus skeleton is notable for the completeness of its armour, which extends from the neck (on the right) all the way over the back to the tail, forming an unbroken, impenetrable covering. It’s among the most complete ankylosaur specimens known, but sadly lacks the skull.

Scolosaurus

The thyreophorans are a group of armoured dinosaurs that rst evolved in the Early Jurassic over 175 million years ago. Their name means ‘shield bearers’, thanks to the bony plates within their skin that protected them from predators. Among the most heavily armoured dinosaurs were the ankylosaurs – ‘living tanks’ with continuous armour along their backs, limbs and, in one species, even their eyelids! It’s thought that this armour probably developed as the ankylosaurs grew, to protect the slow-moving dinosaurs from predators. Some species, like Scolosaurus, also evolved tail clubs, which are thought to have been swung towards predators as a weapon in an attempt to break bone. It’s also possible that other ankylosaurs might have been on the receiving end of these clubs, with evidence of healed wounds on some fossils suggesting they may have been used in intraspecies conicts. Why exactly these dinosaurs might have been ghting each other, however, remains unclear.

5 6

Pachycephalosaurus

Pachycephalosaurs are among the most recognisable dinosaurs, but also the most mysterious. Their distinctive, domeshaped heads were originally thought to be used to headbutt each other, potentially in competition over mates. But more recent scans suggest that, while their skulls were thick, they would probably crack if the dinosaurs butted heads. Instead, it’s now more likely these herbivores used their heads to shove each other, or to headbutt the eshy anks of competitors and predators. While palaeontologists have been able to learn a lot about these dinosaurs, the knowledge mostly comes from a few well-preserved specimens like Pachycephalosaurus. As the majority of their fossils are poorly preserved, Pachycephalosaurs suddenly arrive in the Late Cretaceous with very few clues about where they came from. Discovering the remains of their ancestors, especially in Jurassic rocks, would solve some of the outstanding mysteries.

Top It’s thought the russet head crest and patterned feathers of Anchiornis might have been used for display.

Above This is the skull of an adult Pachycephalosaurus, with a fully formed skull dome and knobbly spikes on its snout and skull margins.

Anchiornis

For over 150 years after the word ‘dinosaur’ was coined, the lives of these ancient reptiles existed only in black and white.

No fossil had been found that preserved any evidence of what colour dinosaurs might have been, leaving it to the imagination of palaeoatists to decide what they could have looked like. This changed in 2010, when scans of Anchiornis revealed the presence of pigment-containing structures called melanosomes in the fossil. These are still found in living animals, with their size and shape linked to the colour they contain.

This was fotunate for palaeontologists, who combined their knowledge of modern melanosomes with the analysis of Anchiornis’ fossil to produce the rst colouraccurate reconstruction of a dinosaur. Similar techniques have since revealed the colouration of other dinosaurs, showing they had a diverse range of prehistoric patterns and hues.

Mamenchisaurus

Sauropods are the largest animals that ever walked the Eath, and rst evolved in the Early Jurassic over 190 million years ago. While the rst true sauropods, like Vulcanodon, were cetainly big, these dinosaurs wouldn’t become giants until around 175 million years ago. Their burgeoning size meant they lost the ability to walk on two feet and developed longer necks, with more numerous and larger neck bones. Currently, the record holder for the longest neck is Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, whose neck is estimated to be 16 metres long – or the same as about one-and-ahalf London buses! The sauropods spread around the world, evolving into well-known dinosaurs such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus. Some would eventually reach truly enormous sizes, with the titanosaurs the heaviest of all. Many of these species tipped the scales at over 50 tonnes, which is around the weight of 10 African elephants.

Triceratops’ frills and horns weren’t just for defence,

but also to attract

mates

8

Triceratops

The ceratopsians, or horned dinosaurs, are an iconic group that evolved over 145 million years ago. Despite their name, the rst horned dinosaurs didn’t have horns. What they did share is a bone found in no other dinosaur, the rostral, which gave ceratopsians their curved, parrot-shaped beaks. These dinosaurs thrived in the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous, with many thousands of fossils found across eastern Asia and Noth America. With so many specimens, researchers can investigate questions that would be impossible to explore in other species. Fossils of Centrosaurus, for example, show that dinosaurs suered from bone cancers similar to those in humans. Meanwhile, scientists believe that the distinctive frills and horns of Triceratops weren’t just for defending against predators, but perhaps also for attracting mates. It’s possible that, similar to modern deer, these dinosaurs would have locked horns to establish dominance.

BODY GUIDE

Left While the scientists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thought dinosaurs were slow, lumbering creatures, research in the past few decades has revealed they were a diverse and dynamic group that dominated Eath for over 160 million years.

Allosaurus

As its remains are so abundant, Allosaurus is often used as a reference for interpreting the anatomy of other less complete theropods.

While this specimen might not be named, it does have one thing that nearly all other dinosaur fossils don’t – a known sex. There are few clues to distinguish male and female birds and reptiles once all the organs and soft tissue have gone, and dinosaurs are no exception. Comparisons of individuals based on size and bone structure have been inconclusive, as have eots to identify sexual characteristics. While long tail feathers in some specimens of Confuciusornis, an early bird, are thought to have a role similar to the tails of male peacocks, this is only an assumption. Currently, the only way to accurately sex a dinosaur is to nd eggs inside it. To make sure they’re not food, the eggs have to be intact, undigested, and located inside the reproductive area of the dinosaur. As a result, only a few fossils, such as this Oviraptorosaur, can be condently identied as female.

Below This exceptional fossil of an unnamed Oviraptorosaur from China contains at least three unhatched eggs (the light grey oval objects seen in the centre and to one side). The condition and position of the eggs shows they weren’t dinner but were ready to be laid.

While you might not know the theropods by name, you’ll cetainly recognise their members. These carnivorous dinosaurs walked on their hind legs and had small front limbs, with famous examples including Tyrannosaurus rex and Allosaurus. Many well-preserved and often complete skeletons have been found, allowing palaeontologists to piece together how the theropods lived. CT scans of many specimens have been used to create models that reveal the biting styles of dierent carnivores, with Allosaurus having a relatively weak bite compared to other theropods. Instead, expets think it bit its prey repeatedly, a series of quick slashes that probably meant its victims died of blood loss. Allosaurus and its close relatives successfully adopted this strategy for millions of years from the Late Jurassic to the mid-Cretaceous, when other carnivorous dinosaurs replaced them.

Buy the book

A History of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils by the Museum’s dinosaur expet, Professor Paul Barrett, is the story of the dinosaurs, uniquely retold through 50 of the most signicant ndings from the fossil record. Photographs of original specimens illustrate both the history of dinosaur discovery and key evolutionary events.

Priced £17.99, A History of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils is available from the Museum’s Shops and online at nhmshop.co.uk. Members and Patrons receive a 20 per cent discount.

Oviraptorosaur

©David Varricchio Zhejiang Museum of Natural History

Standing up for nature Jess Thompson

‘It’s

about tackling the climate crisis but also improving quality of life’

City of Trees CEO Jess Thompson tells us how the community forest charity for Greater Manchester is leading the way in urban forestry – resulting in healthier, happier and more climate-resilient communities.

How did City of Trees come about?

City of Trees stated as pat of a wider community forestry movement established in the early 1990s to demonstrate the benets of trees for the environment, and their contribution to the economic and social regeneration of our towns and cities. We are now one of 15 Community Forests in England, and we focus on all boroughs of Greater Manchester.

City of Trees has three aims: to plant trees, to look after trees and to nuture a culture of trees and woodlands. The last includes everything from how we facilitate a connectiveness to nature through to working with local stakeholders to make the most of trees on behalf of the local community. It’s about tackling the biodiversity and climate crises, but equally about improving people’s quality of life.

England’s Community Forests are currently the largest tree planter in England, planting more trees in recent years than any other organisation. We’re making an impact, not just in numbers of trees planted, but in numbers of people involved.

Why do cities need trees?

The urban forest isn’t just street trees, but all the other patches of vegetation you nd in an urban setting. In cities especially, where spare land is at a premium, we need a rich mosaic of dierent habitats to help our cities thrive.

Trees act as air conditioners, helping to keep cities cool and lter air pollutants, they work like sponges to soak up and clean excess water, and they help to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon. Trees can also help to manage ood risk in areas that are prone to ooding in various ways, such as by slowing the ow of rainwater, absorbing rainwater and reducing erosion.

Trees are proven to improve people’s health and wellbeing. In urban areas that are densely populated, it’s more impotant than ever that trees play a big pat in urban life. Cities such as Manchester are made up of people from all backgrounds, and so by increasing the number of green spaces we’re also helping to reduce inequality around access to nature.

How can Community Forests help communities?

Urban trees suppot lots of wildlife, increasing biodiversity. The urban forest brings nature back into the urban setting, acting as a wildlife corridor to boost local nature recovery. The government has set a target to signicantly increase tree canopy cover by 2050 to help tackle climate change – and urban forestry will help us meet this goal.

Increasingly, our urban trees also provide job oppotunities for people. Our Green Skills programme aims to diversify the environment sector, helping people to enter jobs through non-traditional routes. This helps meet futureskills demand, widen paticipation and increase awareness of the impotance of urban woodland creation and management.

Tree planting is a way to give back to both the wider community and the planet, while enjoying the social and mental health benets of working together in a group. If you make an urban forest meaningful, people will cherish it more and are more likely to take an interest in climate change. Planting trees is a good way to tackle many issues at once – the climate emergency, biodiversity crisis, health and wellbeing, and the economy.

How can trees improve our health and wellbeing?

Trees provide two major health and wellbeing benets. The rst is the physical space itself.

An urban forest allows you to experience nature on your doorstep, a place that you can run, walk or play in.

The second is that time spent volunteering in green spaces is good for you – studies show it can reduce stress, enhance mood and signicantly improve mental health. The New Economics Foundation dened its Five Ways to Wellbeing, which include being physically active, connecting with other people, noticing nature, learning something new, and giving back to your wider community or the planet. Getting involved with, or volunteering in, urban woodlands can help achieve all of these and boost your wellbeing.

Trees also create spaces where people naturally want to be, helping to boost local businesses and creating a café culture, where people gather together to meet, socialise and share ideas over a coee.

My life in a nutshell

I am a PhD candidate working with the University of Salford on exploring the wellbeing impacts of civic environmentalism for population wellness.

I don’t have a forestry or ecology background. I came to community forestry from the media industry 20 years ago, after gaining experience as a volunteer ranger.

My specialism is how our urban forests can suppot people’s health and wellbeing.

I’m proud to lead an organisation bringing forward more female foresters each year in what is, traditionally, a male dominated sector. I hope to see this replicated across other organisations.

My favourite tree is the sequoia, the giant redwood – a majestic tree that takes your breath away.

What challenges do trees in urban spaces face?

Some people still view trees as a nuisance. We’ve heard every possible complaint, from too many leaves to fallen petals. Most urban trees are managed by local authorities that lack resources. Similarly, landowners often want to plant trees, but can’t aord the maintenance. Some people think trees are nice to have but not a necessity, so tree planting isn’t always suppoted.

As an independent charity, City of Trees helps ll this gap. Funding from Defra for our Trees for Climate programme has made a big dierence in community forestry, in terms of planting trees and oering a maintenance plan.

The biggest challenge to planting new trees is unlocking suitable land. Trees can’t just be planted anywhere; we follow the ‘right tree in the right place’ principle. The impact of planting trees on existing environments and infrastructure must be considered, as well as the range of suitable species – we want to avoid planting a monoculture.

Proper site checks must be carried out to ensure good site design, whether it’s a small forest or a few street trees, and to ensure the trees will become properly established over the rst three to ve years.

In our changing climate, we’re now reconsidering what ‘the right tree in the right place’ means. As well as bringing about an increase in some tree diseases, less predictable weather and extreme weather events can also cause many problems. Trees can fail to thrive in an urban setting, especially when the soil is poor quality or contaminated. We’re working with local universities to conduct experiments and gather data on what we can do to adapt our tree planting for our changing climate.

‘Trees create spaces where people want to be, helping to boost local businesses and create a café culture’

How do you get your message across?

The urban forest is a vital pat of our cityscapes and it does so much for us, but it has a bit of an identity problem! It’s not well recognised in the UK, compared to other pats of the world.

We need to shift this perception. Our work in schools is vital to get young people enthused and involved, to shape future generations’ attitudes to

the urban forest. To help raise the prole of urban forestry, City of Trees plans to open the National Urban Forestry Centre in Bury, Greater Manchester. This will spread awareness of the urban forest by bringing together expet stakeholders to showcase and demonstrate the best way of doing this.

With an events space, tree lab and a tree nursery, we hope to create a purpose-built hub to engage the public and those in the sector in a way that’s benecial to both the local community and urban forestry community.

What else does City of Trees do?

The urban forest is our natural heritage and we want people of all ages to engage with it so it’s meaningful to them. Our Citizen Forester volunteer programme engages people from all walks of life to help plant and nuture trees. The evidence has shown this really improves people’s quality of life. Linking up people’s needs and what is meaningful to them helps them value the urban forest more, because they now feel they have more of a stake in it.

Above: We plant trees for and with the people of Greater Manchester, all with the help of our brilliant Citizen Foresters.

Top left: We spread the word, share our passion, and nuture a tree culture that weaves the impotance of trees and woods into the fabric of everyday life.

Bottom left: Our female foresters are all passionate about making our region even better, one tree at a time.

How can people get involved in their own city?

Look for volunteering oppotunities close to home – just Google it! There are lots. All of England’s Community Forests oer volunteering, either directly or via a third paty, and oppotunities are listed on their websites. We’d love to see you on a planting site soon! Lots of companies work with us as pat of their corporate volunteering days, so see if your workplace runs similar initiatives.

Your local park may have a ‘friends of’ group, which is also a great way to meet like-minded people in your area.

Mainly, I’d say just have a go and get stuck in. Do it because it’s fun and you’ll feel great. Tree planting is great exercise and easy to pick up, even if you’ve never done it before. You can also get involved with organisations such as the Royal Parks, the National Trust or the Woodland Trust.

I would encourage anyone thinking of a career path in forestry or ecology to try it. There’s now more awareness of the impotance of the natural environment than ever before, so it’s a great time to stat your career. O

DNA-based methods complement, rather than replace, traditional survey techniques, such as this Malaise trap for insects.

Garden surprises!

As our new gardens are revealed to visitors, Museum scientists can’t wait to see what they will uncover using new and exciting monitoring techniques.

AND BECKY CLOVER

WORDS: EMILIE PEARSON

One of the most eagerly anticipated redevelopment projects at the Museum has come to fruition – our gardens have reopened after nearly two years. The ve-acre site now boasts a range of habitats for wildlife, and encourages visitors to explore the story of life on Eath through themed planting, geology and interpretation boards.

There’s a long history of scientists monitoring and recording wildlife at the Museum. Though our doors rst opened in 1881, it wasn’t until more than 100 years later in 1995 that an area of the gardens opened as a form of outdoor gallery. Showcasing a range of British lowland habitats, the wildlife garden soon became one of the most closely monitored urban green spaces in the UK, with more than 56,000 records being made by 610 recorders, and 3,276 species being recorded (as of November 2023).

DID YOU KNOW?

The most recorded species in the garden to date is the blackbird, while other species records are the rst for the UK. The ladybird Rhyzobius forestieri is an example. This species is black with patchy white hairs and had been recorded slowly spreading across Europe, but was repoted in

How can eDNA help nature recover?

Adult and larval Rhyzobius forestieri ladybirds eat scale insects. They’re usually found on ornamental plants in parks and gardens, but can also occur in shady woods.

Britain for the rst time when Museum beetle expet Max Barclay found it in the gardens.

Old and new

As the new habitats in the garden mature and ourish, our scientists will combine traditional monitoring methods with new approaches and technologies to record the wildlife living here and to monitor changes over time.

Plants are surveyed using two methods: compatment vegetation monitoring, where the gardens are divided into sections based on habitat type and surveyed every other year; and quadrat vegetation surveys, where wire-frame quadrats are placed on the grassland habitat and all the plant species within each quadrat are recorded.

We use transects to record animals such as birds and butteies. This involves walking through the gardens along a set route at a steady pace, and recording any sightings of the target animals. Depending on what’s being recorded, this type of survey may be carried out weekly, monthly, or only at set times of the year. We also record details about the environment, such as temperature. Sometimes, a xedpoint survey is a more suitable

One of the biggest challenges when working on nature recovery is getting an accurate picture of which species live where. When it comes to traditional methods of recording biodiversity, this is compounded by an increasing skill shotage – there are few, if any, expets available who have the ability to identify most species. This means it’s rarely possible to comprehensively survey the full diversity of life at a site using traditional methods. For this reason, more visible and popular species, such as birds and butteies, tend to be monitored more than lessappealing species. Most of our biodiversity – microscopic organisms, fungi and the majority of insects – falls into this category and is hardly ever recorded. As a result, it doesn’t inform conservation decision-making.

DNA-based recording techniques oer a solution to these problems. They can detect and identify a much more representative suite of species than previously possible, and make sure that small and dicult-to-identify species are recorded. Overall, DNA has the potential to revolutionise our knowledge of the natural world.

Insects are captured so that they can be identied and their populations monitored.

Above The Malaise trap is a tentlike structure – insects y into the screen and migrate to the highest point, where they are collected. Left Butteies and moths, such as the day-ying burnet moth, are attracted to owers in the gardens.

©Graham Finch, VC55

Rutland) County

option. This involves recording species from a static point over time and is typically used for monitoring breeding birds, to see if they return to an area to nest year after year, or for recording landscape change over time by taking photographs. In our gardens, this method is used by volunteers to record dragony and damsely species in spring and summer. Camera traps are also a great way to take photos and videos of elusive or nocturnal species, such as red foxes.

When it comes to small insects and other invetebrates that are dicult to catch and identify in the eld, methods such as pitfall and Malaise traps are used. A pitfall trap is a container sunk into the ground into which ground-dwelling invetebrates fall so they can be identied and counted. A Malaise trap is a large, tent-like structure that catches ying insects.

The sound of life

Alongside these tried and tested traditional techniques, we’re also using new technology. The Urban Nature Project is experimenting with a range of digital monitoring methods for wildlife. Techniques such as acoustic recording and environmental sensors oer the possibility of continuous, real-time monitoring of species and a range of variables such as temperature, humidity and pollution.

Acoustic monitoring involves recording sounds in natural environments and is a fantastic way to capture information about unseen wildlife. Grids of small acoustic and environmental recording devices have been installed throughout the gardens, and the team will also monitor sounds from under the water in the pond, soil and trees. This will allow us to identify the species living in the gardens and to crosscheck these results against our visual observations and environmental DNA sampling (or eDNA).

DNA detectives

DID YOU KNOW?

We test soil samples to nd DNA, which helps us build a detailed picture of the environment, including many species that are often overlooked, such as invetebrates, bacteria and fungi.

You may be familiar with DNA barcoding from crime-busting lms and TV series. Just as criminals may leave their DNA at a crime scene, organisms can shed anything from dead skin cells to mucus and faeces as they move through their surroundings. These traces are known as eDNA. By collecting and studying samples such as water, soil and air, we can detect millions of traces at once from a single sample, known as metabarcoding. These traces can represent a huge range of species that are, or have been, present in the area. We can use this method to detect and document a wide range of species, including many that would otherwise not have been recorded –from bacteria and fungi to mammals, plants and invetebrates.

The information we’re collecting is being fed into a new Data Ecosystem, which we’re building with our patners Amazon Web Services. Having it all in one place will allow us to see the natural world in a completely new way. All these new technologies will be pat of our long-term monitoring. We look forward to seeing what they will reveal.

Special thanks to Tom McCater, Ed Baker and Sam Thomas for their help with this aticle.

One of the 25 sensors installed across the new gardens (right) and under the water in the pond (left).

One of the biggest challenges is getting an accurate picture of which species live where

THE MUSEUM IN ACTION

How to get involved in wildlife recording

Check out the Museum’s Nature Recording Hub online to discover how to record the wildlife in an urban environment. By taking pat in surveys and recording schemes, you can improve our understand of UK habitats, contribute to scientic research, and inform decisions on how to enhance biodiversity in towns and cities. There are many schemes and resources oered by UK organisations. Discover the oppotunities: nhm.ac.uk/take-pat/monitor-andencourage-nature/nature-recording-hub

THE MUSEUM GARDEN’S MOST RECORDED SPECIES SINCE 1995

Blackbird

It’s no surprise that one of the UK’s most common birds has been recorded 1,785 times in the gardens. Here, it feeds among the shrubs and on ivy berries, and nests in our hedgerows.

Common frog

Common frogs rely on garden ponds, especially in urban areas, and there have been 170 records in the garden. The new pond provides a pefect breeding habitat for amphibians.

Grey squirrel

Oppotunistic grey squirrels thrive in urban areas, and there have been 224 records in our garden. Next time you see one, look at its tail – it often includes several shades and a white ‘halo’.

Harlequin ladybird

There have been 180 records of this non-native species. It was introduced to the UK in 2004 as a natural pest control and has attracted negative press, but it’s nothing to worry about.

Red campion

Red campion thrives in our garden from May to September and has been recorded here 382 times. Its pretty pink petals are appealing to pollinators and are sure to brighten your visit.

Azure damsely

This small, pale blue damsely favours well-vegetated, sheltered water bodies and is commonly seen around our pond from May to September. It’s been recorded here 244 times.

Relocation, relocation

Today, Museum sta are working hard to move millions of specimens to a bespoke facility as pat of our ‘Unlocked’ project. But this isn’t the rst time we’ve tackled an ambitious relocation.

WORDS KATHRYN ROOKE, INTERIM MUSEUM ARCHIVIST

Before the Natural History Museum was opened, its natural history collections were pat of the British Museum, in Bloomsbury. As today, the nature specimens were very popular, but beset with preservation problems. Mould and pest infestations were so rife that when Sir Richard Owen was appointed Superintendent of the Natural History Depatment in 1856, bonres of rotting skins were a regular occurrence in the coutyard.

Realising the insurmountable limitations of the building, Owen complained, ‘In order to receive and to display zoological specimens, space must be had; and not merely for display, but for orderly display.’

In 1859, he sketched a new Museum, which survives in the Archives. But his proposal was not met with universal suppot. South Kensington was felt by some to be an inconveniently ‘distant suburb’, and the idea of separating display and study materials, even under the same roof, was controversial.

The nancial and logistical challenges of transferring whale skeletons across the capital were undeniable, but Owen was relentless in his campaign. In 1878, two decades after his sketch, a Parliamentary Act was passed for the removal of the Natural History Collections from the British Museum. Now the real work began!

The Museum’s Archives hold material relating to its history, including architectural plans, expedition repots, research notes, correspondence, specimen records and sta photographs.

On Easter Monday, 1881, the new British Museum (Natural History) welcomed the public into largely empty galleries. Another two years would be needed to ll the spaces as designed. The Museum Archive records the cost and complexity of safely

In 1881, the Natural History Museum opened to the public. Sir Richard Owen (below, with a moa skeleton) had achieved his dream.

packing, transpoting, securing and displaying specimens, naming many of the labourers hired and even orders for new xtures and ttings. It took 354 van journeys and some 17,000 replacement labels for the Museum to be felt to be complete in 1883, 27 years after Owen’s earliest-known sketch.

Satised at last with his ‘Cathedral of Nature’ and now 79 years of age, Owen retired, leaving a legacy of one of the most loved museums in the UK. O

THE MUSEUM IN ACTION

Visit us

Our Archive is open to the public by appointment on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 10.00–16.00. For more information, please email archives@nhm.ac.uk

WINNING IMAGES

Created by Ian Ford in Brazil, this image won Highly Commended in the Behaviour: Mammals category of this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition